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And while I'm at it, I might as well add one more allegory/example.

This one is somewhat spooky.

Many of us search in earnest for some kind of primal cause. Now, in fact I don't think even if we knew what it was, it would make much difference. But that's just me.

But imagine this. You ever been to a stadium and watched one of the huge screen TV type setups where there is one picture, but it is actually made of lots of separate TV's?

We can see the big picture, but if we chose, we could get close and watch an individual image.

It is very possible that any primal cause, in fact reality itself, is like this. Depending on how close we are, we see a different picture. It's even possible for the scenes being played out on the individual TV's to be totally contradictory of what we see when we look at the big picture.

I suppose it is one of the ultimate tests of our faith that we can even believe that these questions do indeed have a rational answer.

It is also one of the great quirks of modern science that it seems the more we learn, the more the door opens to the possibility that some, if not all, of what we see and know is in some sense illusory.

We can see the big picture, but if we chose, we could get close and watch an individual image.

And then, if we wanted to get closer still, we could observe the zillions of little R, G, or B colored dots that comprise the image on any individual TV screen....

I find it so interesting that the problem of the observer comes up in both Einsteinian Relativity and quantum physics, but theorists of Newtonian mechanics seem to suggest that what occurs "in-between" the scales of the very, very large (Relativity) and the very, very small (QM) goes on completely independently of any observer. Causal determinism rules the show.

Anyhoot, it seems to me the "big picture" cannot be seen in the appearance of things; this is only the "surface presentation" of a reality that goes down to very, very deep roots.... Perhaps ultimate reality is mathematical in form -- as Pythagoras and Plato suggested. Funny thing is, we can't "see" pi, for instance; yet we know it's "there."

Or so it seems to me. This is such a fascinating topic, djf! Thanks so much for bringing it up!